by Dorie Graham
Well, they could have it.
“Are you such a client?” she asked.
He met her steady gaze. “Yes, I believe I am.”
“You’re saying you’re interested in feng shui?”
“That’s right. I have a condo on the intercoastal. It needs—” he gestured lamely “—some of that stuff.”
“Feng shui is more a philosophy than a collection of ‘stuff.’”
“Right. I need your expertise on how to bring that philosophy into my home.”
“And are you familiar with it then, Mr. Langston?”
“Jack.”
“Okay, Jack, what do you know about feng shui?”
“It’s the philosophy of…how energy—” he wiggled his hand through the air “—moves through space…and how you can arrange a living area…to promote harmony, balance and well-being.” He smiled triumphantly.
A shock—a connection—ran between them. She stood for a moment, not breathing as the turmoil inside her subsided and a feeling of well-being wrapped around her. She fisted her hands, fighting the outrageous urge to touch him.
Then she glanced away. Whoever he was, the feelings he stirred in her were anything but normal. “I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
“Why not?” He stepped even closer to her.
For an instant she thought he might grab her. A thrill shot through her and she chastised herself for the unwanted reaction. “My schedule is full. I’m not currently accepting new clients.”
“Maybe if you saw my place, you’d feel inspired. It’s a great condo.”
“No doubt.”
“And if I wanted to hire you for some regular interior-design work, would you be available?”
She stared at him a long moment, a strange sense of longing filling her. But he’d come from the Emperor’s Attic. He was interested in feng shui. He knew a little about her family.
And she was attracted to him.
“I’ve already told you that my schedule is full,” she finally said.
Disappointment flashed in his eyes. “Very well, Erin.” He handed her one of his business cards. “In case you change your mind.”
She took his card and extended her hand. “Thank you for stopping by.” His hand was warm and firm. The odd sense of well-being blanketed her. Her chest tightened with regret. “I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
“Are you?”
She let go of his hand, but the connection stretched between them. “Yes, Jack, I am.”
He nodded toward the card in her hand. “You know how to reach me.”
She refrained from comment as he turned and walked away.
Several hours later, Erin rubbed her eyes, then focused again on the numbers in the spreadsheet. Damn, she hadn’t realized she was cutting things so close this month.
And she’d turned away a paying customer.
Thoughts of Jack Langston assailed her, as they had numerous times since he’d left. It would be best to stay away from that one. The man was anything but conventional. Her life had already been one unconventional mess after another.
While Erin was growing up, her mother had dragged her and her sisters from lover to lover, home to home. The rootless existence had taken its toll on Erin. In her teens, she had delved into feng shui in an attempt to bring some order to the standard chaos of their temporary living arrangements, but no sooner would she make a place livable then they’d be off to Maggie’s next lover.
When Erin had been old enough, she’d escaped to live with her sisters. They had stayed in one place, but with Nikki’s night creepers and Tess’s minions, though, Erin had traded one circus for another. More than anything now she needed normal, and Jack did not fit that bill.
The bell on her door jingled and she jumped, her heart speeding the way it had when Jack Langston had appeared beside her desk earlier.
She groaned inwardly as Tess headed toward her, their oldest sister, Nikki, in tow. Both bore looks of determination. Erin braced herself as they stopped, arms crossed, before her.
“Okay, miss, it’s quitting time. You’re coming with us.” Tess glanced at Nikki for confirmation.
“That’s right, Erin. We’re stealing you away. No arguments,” Nikki said. “We haven’t seen enough of you lately and Mason and Dylan are both tied up, so Tess and I are on our own for the night. The timing couldn’t be better.”
Erin eyed them warily. “Better for what?”
“Ladies’ night.” Tess grabbed Erin’s purse from the back of her chair. “Let’s go. If we hurry, we can make happy hour.”
“Wait a minute. Since when are the two of you so anxious to hit happy hour? Nikki, you hate clubbing. And Tess, you’d be asking for trouble by setting foot in a bar. What is this really about?”
“We want to spend some time with you. Why does it have to be about anything more than that?” Nikki’s eyes filled with censure.
“I don’t feel like going to a bar. Why don’t we go to a nice restaurant instead? Someplace we can actually hear each other.” Erin said.
“Okay.” Tess slung Erin’s purse over her own shoulder and headed for the door. “Let’s go to that little place in South Beach.”
“Wait, come back with my purse.” Erin hurried after her. “What place in South Beach?”
“That place that Josh discovered that he likes so well.”
“What place? You are talking about a restaurant, right?”
“Come on. We’ll have fun. When was the last time we had a girls’ night out?” Nikki asked.
Unease rippled along Erin’s spine. Something was fishy about this whole thing. She dug in her heels, but Tess pushed through the door. Groaning, Erin followed.
3
TWENTY MINUTES LATER Erin stared up at the neon sign in disbelief. “B.E.D? What kind of place is this?”
“It’s the hottest club in Miami. You really should get out more.” Tess moved around the long line outside the club and waved three VIP passes at the doorman, who motioned her through the large double doors.
“I thought we were going to a nice restaurant.” Erin raised her voice over the music pounding from inside.
Nikki shrugged. “Tess set her mind on this, and you know how she is. There was no talking her out of it. You’re right about one thing. Mason will blow a gasket when he hears she came here. Look, they’re already starting to flock.”
Indeed, Tess had already drawn a small group of male admirers as she stopped to wait for her sisters. Erin folded her arms. “I’m not doing this.”
“Yes, you are.” Tess turned to Erin and looped her arm through hers. “Here she is, boys, my sister Erin. Who’s going to buy her a drink?”
“Tess.” Erin glared first at the men, who dropped back, then at her sister as Tess dragged her through another set of doors.
Green and pink lights flashed throughout a cavernous area swarming with hopeful singles. Erin blinked through the smoky haze. “Good God, are those beds?”
“Complete with plush pillows.” One of the men from Tess’s flock smiled at her, his teeth unnaturally white—or was that the fluorescent lighting? “Shall we?”
“Shall we what?” Erin asked.
He gestured toward the nearest bed, where several people lay sprawled in various positions, some propped on what indeed appeared to be plush pillows. One couple’s limbs were so entwined, she couldn’t tell where one ended and the other started.
Gritting her teeth, she turned to Tess. “What the hell are we doing here?”
“Don’t get upset.” Nikki stepped between the two. “Let’s sit and see if we can’t have some fun. It isn’t like we’ve never been clubbing before. What’s everyone drinking?”
Erin gestured around her. “This isn’t a club. It’s a meat market.”
“You want to know what tonight is?” Tess asked, her eyes wide. “This is an intervention.”
Erin blinked. “What?”
“You’ve been moping around too much lately.” Nikki shooed a man over and mad
e room for the three of them on the bed. “Come on, sit beside me. Look at all the lovely men.”
“Pick one,” Tess said. “It’s time to get back on the horse.”
Erin glared at her.
Nikki touched Erin’s arm. “We’re just worried about you since that thing with Ryan.”
“I have written off men,” Erin said as she perched on the edge of the massive mattress.
“Good thing we planned this intervention then.” Tess signaled a waitress over.
Her eyes filled with concern, Nikki leaned toward Erin while Tess ordered drinks for all of them. “Sweetie, I know you’ve been a little unhappy lately, but there’s no reason for such drastic action. You can’t swear off men. You’re a McClellan. You’ll put Aunt Sophie in her grave, not to mention what Maggie will say when she hears about it.”
“This has nothing to do with Aunt Sophie or our mother,” Erin said. “I don’t expect the two of you to understand.”
Tess sank onto one of the pillows. “I get it. You jumped into the love arena and got hurt, so you’re hesitant to get back in there. Completely understandable, but it’ll all work out. This kind of thing happens all the time. Even to us. Right, Nikki?”
Nikki nodded. “But we worked through it and so can you, Erin.”
“I hate to disappoint the two of you, but there isn’t anyone for me to work things through with. And there isn’t going to be.” Erin’s gaze drifted over the cluster of men standing a few feet away, waiting for the smallest encouragement.
“It doesn’t have to be like that,” Nikki said. “All we wanted was to let you know that we think you’re making a mistake. Maybe this isn’t the right time or place for you to find a great guy. Maybe you’ll find him in a nice restaurant or maybe one of these days he’ll waltz through your shop door. The point is that you should never give up. It’ll be worth it, and in time you’ll laugh about swearing off men.”
Maybe one of these days he’ll waltz through your shop door.
Nikki’s words sent goose bumps running up Erin’s arms. Hadn’t a great guy walked through her door earlier that day? And what had she done? She’d sent him on his way. “It wouldn’t matter.”
“What do you mean?” Tess asked.
The memory of Jack Langston’s intent gaze warmed Erin. When he had looked at her today, it had been as if he had really seen her in a way no one ever had. He’d been like some otherworldly phantom with his sudden appearance.
She let her gaze drift again over the hopefuls: one built like a linebacker, with vivid green eyes; one as toned and buff as any bodybuilder, an intelligence in his eyes that might have intrigued her in the past; and one with a bright smile hinting at a playfulness that might have appealed to her at another time.
A time before meeting Jack.
“I don’t know how to explain,” she finally said.
Nikki squeezed her hand. “Try, hon. Is it about the gift?”
She should just tell them. But how could she say she rejected the gift and all it stood for without making them feel she rejected them? She’d been hard-pressed to spend time with her sisters lately. She couldn’t shake her disappointment that they’d fallen in with their mother’s ways.
Finally she said. “It doesn’t matter. I appreciate what you’re trying to do here, but I really don’t want a man in my life right now.”
Nikki nodded. “Well, we had to try. Maybe you just need a little time.”
Time. Would that make any difference? If only she hadn’t had to turn Jack away. He’d been interested in more than a feng shui consultation. Her empathic nature might not be as well developed as either of her sisters’, but she could tell that much.
“Okay, so if you’re not going to dance with any of the men here, the least we can do is enjoy our drinks.” Tess passed them umbrella-topped glasses. She lifted her glass high. “To love and finding it in unexpected places.”
“To love.” Nikki clinked her glass first to Tess’s, then Erin’s.
Erin nodded, then took a tentative sip, a sense of loss filling her. To love? How had Typhoid Mary fared in that arena?
“HI, THOMAS, IS AUNT SOPHIE here?” Erin peered past her longtime family friend the following afternoon as she stood in the open door of her aunt’s house.
She hadn’t had any appointments that morning and had finished packing her apartment. Her new home was ready. The movers would arrive in the morning.
“She and your mother are in Fort Lauderdale at a seminar.”
“Oh.” Disappointment filled her. If this was anything like previous healing seminars they’d been to, it would keep them tied up for the rest of the day. “I just thought I’d visit.”
“What am I, chopped liver?”
“I would love to visit with you.” She laughed in spite of herself.
Thomas had always been able to lighten her mood. Too bad Maggie hadn’t ever hooked up with him. He’d have made a better father to Erin and her sisters than any of the men who had drifted in and out of her mother’s life.
His smile warmed her as he led her back to the brightly lit kitchen. He motioned her to the table and headed for the coffeepot. “I was just taking a break.”
“What are you working on?”
“Stopped by to finish some lighting in Maggie’s new studio. It helps her…the light is…getting to be a problem.”
Her throat tightened. She still struggled with accepting the fact that her mother was slowly going blind. “So how is she?”
“She’s a trooper, that’s for sure.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have come. I don’t want to interrupt your work.”
He placed a cup of coffee in front of her and sat down across from her with his own. “Nonsense. Take a break with me. You didn’t come here to talk about Maggie.”
Guilt swamped her. “I do want to talk about her. I’m concerned about her, Thomas.”
“She knows that, but she doesn’t want you to be. She’s adamant that we all keep the status quo. She’s even continuing to paint. We’ve set up her studio so she can find everything by feel when the time comes. The other day she tried a practice run with a blindfold.”
Erin’s stomach twisted at the thought of Maggie painting blindfolded. “She can’t be serious about continuing with her painting. Not after…”
“She is.” He shrugged. “At least for now. I think it’s important to support her in whatever she’s doing to deal with this.”
“But it seems so…hopeless.”
“Not to your mother, and the last thing she needs from any of us is discouragement.” He poured sugar into his cup. “The best thing you can do for her is to not show her how worried you are.”
She nodded.
“So?” He leaned toward her. “I live close enough that I know you girls show up on your aunt’s doorstep when you have some trouble to chew over with her.”
“Compared to Maggie, how can I complain?”
“I’m all ears.”
“I’m having a little trouble with all this. You know, the healing stuff, the McClellan gift.”
“You mean the sexual healing.”
Heat tinged her cheeks. “Is it wrong for me to want to have a normal life? To not feel that I need to have a man around?”
“I’ve heard some of this—about your plan to move off on your own and give up men. They’re all in an uproar, aren’t they?”
“I knew when I told Nikki and Tess that I was moving word would spread.”
“You didn’t need that big place all to yourself. Makes sense. When’s the big day?”
“Tomorrow. I don’t have much. It shouldn’t be too bad.” She sipped her coffee. “Nikki and Tess dragged me out to pick up men last night. It was a total disaster.”
“You really want to be all on your own?”
“Yes, I don’t want a man in my life. I don’t need one.”
He shrugged and drank from his mug. “I think a girl’s entitled to date or not date. They’ll get over it eventually.”
“Exactly. I choose if and when I date, just like I choose whether or not to work with any client in particular.”
“Do you pick and choose your clients?”
Her stomach tightened. Why had she mentioned that? “Well, I’ve always been grateful for any clients that come my way. I’ve never turned one down…until yesterday.”
“You turned down a client?”
“He wanted a consultation on feng shui. I don’t do that anymore. I have the right to pursue a more conventional career, don’t I?”
“Of course you do, Erin, but since when did you decide that you didn’t like feng shui anymore?”
“Since I decided to get serious about establishing myself in interior design. My business has really picked up.”
“Enough for you to turn away a potential client?”
“I’m making more, but I seem to be spending more, too.” She shifted in her seat. “He can find someone else to help him.”
“Sure he can, but no one does feng shui like you do, hon.”
“Like I did.”
“So you plan to live a conventional, man-free life.”
“Exactly. What’s the problem with that? What can I do to get my family to respect my decision?”
“I don’t know.” He scratched the back of his neck. “Your personal life is one thing, but it seems a little unconventional, not to mention unprofessional, to turn down a paying customer. It’s not the way I’d advise you to run your business.”
He was right. It was bad business to turn away a customer, especially during a lean month. Yet the thought of working with Jack Langston gave her a distinctly disquieted feeling. She was just too attracted to the man.
Thomas leaned back and cocked his head. “It’s a guess, but I’d say this potential customer was just such a young man to test your new no-man vow.”
She stared at him a moment. How could he possibly know? “I never said I wouldn’t have men as clients.”
“But you turned down this man.”
“He wanted feng shui.”
“Is that all he wanted?”
“Yes. He didn’t come on to me, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Her cheeks warmed. Jack may not have come on to her, but her gut told her he had wanted to.
